KOLKATA: India's leading mobile broadband operators have exhorted telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to free up airwaves in the L-band, with frequencies in the range of 1427-1518 MHz, to boost download speeds of 3G and 4G services amid explosive demand for data. The Lband is allocated to the armed forces but a chunk of these airwaves remains idle.

The L-band "is largely unused or underutilised and identifying it for mobile broadband services (such as 3G and 4G) would provide an excellent opportunity to deliver high-quality broadband, especially in the rural areas in line with Digital India goals," COAI said in a letter to Prasad, a copy of which was seen by ET.

Experts said delivering 3G and 4G services on L-band would be cost-efficient as it requires half the quantum of airwaves than, say, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz or 2100 MHz spectrum. "L-band requires only half the quantum of airwaves for delivering highspeed 3G and 4G data downloads, so auctioning such spectrum would also benefit operators as it should technically be cheaper with a lower reserve price as it would involve smaller blocks," said a top executive of a leading mobile carrier, requesting not to be identified.

The development comes at a time when L-band is likely to be declared an official mobile band for 3G and 4G services globally at Geneva-based International Telecom Union's World Radio Conference in November, a forum which senior department of telecom officials will attend.

The ITU, which deals with spectrum management issues globally, is a multinational collective effort between governments and private companies to recommend new technologies and standards.

Identifying the L-band for mobile broadband services, the COAI said, would also open up local manufacturing opportunities of low cost 3G/4G smartphones by unlocking fresh economies of scale.

Experts said that global handset makers would also be keen to support this since the European Commission recently voted for the release of the L-band across the European Union for dealing with surging 4G data traffic. "4G users worldwide do a lot of downloads and the L-band can significantly boost such download capacity and ensure good speeds regardless of growing mobile data traffic," said the executive cited earlier.

DoT is reportedly planning another mega spectrum sale in early 2016 that may rake in even more revenue for the Narendra Modi government than the one in March 2015. It may auction frequencies cutting across 2G, 3G and 4G bands, including the efficient 4G spectrum in the 700 MHz band for the first time.